Flatline Louder
by mind-your-fingers
Summary: Like draws like, and no two hearts flatline louder than those of Vlad Masters and Danny Fenton. Remake of Danny Phantom with a focus on the Vlad arc. Badger Cereal. Formerly named Setting Jewels.
1. And Here I Was

Uh, hi.

I've pretty recently joined the Phandom (given that three months ago counts as recent), and fallen pretty heavily for Badger Cereal. But (as the general consensus seems to be) I have MAJOR problems with Vlad's character arc. That being said, I'm fic-ing a remake of the Vlad/Danny arc.

As you read, please keep in mind that this is not Pompous Pep, and very _not_ ship-centric. Also, my writing is _extremely_ headcanon-heavy, and I won't come out in the captions to list them all, because that's a total bore. Feel free to confirm or ask after anything you think might be a headcanon, though!

You can also find this fic on deviantART under spectral-zura and on AO3 under flickly. If you'd like to get a look at my redesigns, those are also on DA, but my art blog is bluebarely, and has a higher overall concentration of DP art to other stuff.

Enjoy!

* * *

"He'd taken his friends down to the lab while we were running errands. Jazz said she heard a scream, and when she got to the basement, he was…you can imagine how he was."

 _Crack._

"Apparently he was messing around with his friends, and they _dared_ him to go inside it. He must've told them that it wasn't working."

 _Crack._

"Luckily, he didn't sustain the same _effects_ that you did. We've perfected the ectoplasm concentration in the filtration system since then. But Jazz just wouldn't let up until we took him to the hospital."

 _Crack._

"He's there right now. We rushed him there as soon as could."

 _CRACK._

Vlad lowered his finger, the magenta ectoplasm at his fingertip fading. A collection of empty wine bottles he'd just had fetched was now a mess of glass shards, scattered explosively across the tarp on the floor. The sight was nothing too strange—he'd gained the habit of doing this whenever he had a particularly arduous call.

He looked toward the receiver for the first time in seven minutes.

"Is your son's condition stable, at least?" he asked, putting on the voice he used for sob-story charities.

"Danny," Maddie corrected. "And for now, yes. From what the doctors tell us. They're treating him for burns right now, but there's _more_ to his condition. _They_ aren't going to know the full effects of ectoplasm exposure like that."

Vlad didn't need to see Maddie's face—she was fuming, no matter how much she tried to keep it out of her voice. "Maddie, my dear, I'm sure the doctors are competent enough to at least treat the burns Daniel sustained." He conjured up some ectoplasm to stir with his finger as he talked. "Just contact me when he's out and I'll take care of the rest."

Maddie stuttered rather adorably as she picked up on what he was talking about. "That's… very sweet of you, but I'm just not-"

"Oh, Maddie, I insist. You and your children don't need any hospital bills causing distress," the man cooed. " In fact, I know of a couple names that are known to reduce scarring brilliantly. Let me refer them to you."

"Vlad, we didn't call you to ask for money."

"Of course not, of course not, Maddie _dear._ But a godfather should help his godchildren any way he can, hm? I _have_ been in the same boat as Daniel, after all." He smiled honeyedly. "If you could at least keep it in mind…"

"I'll do that, but I've got a lot to think about right now," Maddie countered quickly. She started to say something else, but a couple other voices interrupted with words Vlad couldn't make out. After a few heartbeats, Maddie was back. "Vlad, Danny's doctor wants to talk to us."

"Good luck to you and your son, my dear. Call again soon?"

"Goodbye, Vlad."

Vlad stared at the receiver for a good thirty seconds afterwards, before alerting someone on the help to come for the wine bottles-turned-targets. He was in his private study before anyone could come and ask questions.

Oh, the stupidity of a child. It was the same stupidity that had led Vlad to believe leaning in front of an unstable ectoplasmic prototype was a safe idea, back when he was twenty, but it was stupidity nonetheless. Had Jack not _told_ that boy that the things in the Fenton lab were dangerous? Were Daniel and his friends underinformed on the subject? Vlad's eyes glittered with evil delight; oh he would bet they were! _Another_ thing to blame on Jack: not keeping his family safe. Wonderful!

Hmm.

When one had a net worth in the early hundred _billions,_ they could most certainly get away with bribing some exhausted cops. Vlad had it on good account that Jack had run into the Amity Park Police Department more than once, always on account of neighborhood disturbances. There hadn't been much hoopla about FentonWorks in the past few years, since Amity had apparently grown used to the Fenton family business. _But…_ what would happen if they got a tipoff about child mistreatment?

Vlad had paused mid-turn, curious, but he waved the thought away and resumed pacing. He'd argued similar notions with himself more than once—it was too hairy a business to get into; too many mouths to keep shut. Vladimir Masters was _so_ much more than a man with money, anyhow, and money would not make his revenge against Jack _absolute._ He huffed irritably.

So what would?

Vlad's pacing circle widened to accustom to his irritated speed.

 _Absolute_ revenge...it would have to involve more people than just Jack. He and Vlad had not spoken more than a few words in years; he knew Jack still considered him a friend somehow, but it wasn't _enough!_ His family, however…yes, it would have to involve his family. They were too precious to Jack to go unscathed. Everything Jack had, Vlad would happily destroy, or else take for himself. Maddie would be in the "take" category, obviously, but Jack's children—Jasmine, the prodigy, and Daniel-

The billionaire gasped as the gears in his mind came to a grinding halt, having already churned out something wonderful…something utterly, awfully wonderful. He found himself horrified, unsure...

But if the magnitude idea scares you, then it's perfect, is it not! He would leave for Amity Park on the morrow. Young Daniel wasn't going anywhere, after all.

He wouldn't be going anywhere ever again.

* * *

"No, Pamela, he's in the hospital."

"Oh, you're kidding."

Maddie sighed noiselessly, rubbing the bridge of her nose. Across the table from her, Jazz glowered weakly, reddened eyes narrowing a smidge.

"I'm afraid not," the ghost hunter disagreed. "We decided it was best he be looked at by medical doctors."  
"Well, of _course,_ Maddie. Who else are you going to get tending to him, a stunt double?" Pamela Manson clucked her tongue, prompting an even harder glare from the other line.

 _"Maybe a spectrobiologist,"_ Maddie mouthed. Jazz's glare moved from Maddie's phone to Maddie's eyes. Maddie rolled her eyes brusquely.

Jazz and Pam Manson were a lot for her to take at once.

"Well, y'know, my little Sammykins is so broken _up_ about this," Pam pouted. "She won't talk to us, and when she does she just yells her head off and stomps back to her room."

"Isn't that what always happens?" Jazz croaked quietly. Maddie put a finger to quirked lips.

"What was that?"

"Nothing, Pam. Thank you for calling, but I'd really like to keep this matter in the family."

"Mmm. I can see why."

Maddie glared death into the receiver, faintly wondering if banshee screams were also lethal when done over phone lines. It wasn't a secret that Social Services had looked into the Fenton children's welfare before—at least, not anymore it wasn't; Danny had told Sam who had told a maid who had told Pam. But that did _not_ give Pam the right to make commentary about how the Fentons worked.

She could feel herself shifting into a predatory crouch over the table, prompting Jazz to lift her head up to make room.

"Pam." She snapped. "Tell Sam that we won't be allowing visitors until after Danny's out of the hospital, _alright?_ It should only be a couple of days."

Maddie sneered victoriously to hear Pam turn cold. "Maddie, you know I'm just trying to _help,_ dear."

"Yeah, you—"

Jazz whipped the phone from her mother and hung up without a word. Maddie stared, anger morphing into guilt as the teenager wiped at her eyes with a palm.

"Mom, I don't think any of us need that right now," Jazz began shakily. "Okay?"

Maddie awkwardly patted her hand. "Okay, baby."

They sat in silence. Jazz's copious amounts of freckles were almost camouflaged by the blood that rose in her face, her brown eyes ringed with red. Aside from the fact that she'd been crying off-and-on for hours, she looked so much like Maddie when Maddie was her age.

After a few minutes, Jazz sighed. "I know you didn't want to take Danny to the hospital, but thank you for doing it anyway."

"It's okay, Jazz." Not that she would've let them do anything less. Jasmine was just a little bit used to getting her way, but that was usually because she was at least a little bit right. It was a precarious position for a parent to be in for sure.

 _Darn that adolescent genius,_ Maddie remarked in her head. She'd pulled the exact same tricks as Jazz had on her own parents when she was her age. It just ran in the…

 _Family._ Maddie's heart sank like a balloon filled with ice. Family.

Right.

Maddie licked her lips, before patting Jazz's hand again and announcing that she was going to check on her father.

* * *

The device was an oldie-but-goodie, something Vlad had cooked up back in his thieving days. He hadn't had much reason to use it now—most of the people he commissioned for dirty work were ghosts, and they had their own means of stealth—but for just this once, he was excited to pull the old, mechanical little friend from his tech cupboard.

He immediately located the camera in the teen's room, situated at a familiar place in the far corner. A press of the device against the black metal sent an electrical impulse through the camera, looping whatever footage it had found. His job secured, Vlad smirked, floating over to the bedside.

He had never seen Daniel in person, but he knew for certain _this_ was not a very favorable impression. Behind the flushed, mottled Lichtenberg figures on his cheeks, and the purple-veined eyelids, and the tubing snaking into Daniel's nostrils, lay what must have been a very charming-looking young man. He looked like Jack, but not nearly enough to disgust Vlad—oh, there was the sweetest shadow of Maddie in the boy, lurking in his lithe form and the shape of his face.

Vlad stroked some of Daniel's hair out of his eyes. "Oh, dear boy, I must apologize in advance. It's not _you_ who I'm after, I've got much fatter fish to fry." He snickered darkly. "I know Maddie will be crushed to find her son dead…but you're the ungifted second-born, aren't you? Jack's stupidity had to go to _one_ of you children. And when you're stupid enough to tempt fate like you did with the portal, well, Maddie just can't sympathize with that. She will eventually leave you to history, along with your father."

He grinned at the imagery. Why hadn't he thought of this _earlier?_ Rid Maddie of the deadweight son, claim her and her prodigious daughter for himself in their solemn hour, then come back and kill Jack when the oaf had been forgotten! It was _perfect._

Vlad presented a hand to himself, watching it go intangible before hovering it over the injured teen's chest.

"This really is a very simple procedure, Daniel," he reassured the prone form below him. His only response was the rhythmic _beep. beep. beep._ of Daniel's heart monitor. "Much like disrupting machinery, actually. I'll just root around inside your heart until it stops. It shouldn't take very long at all and oh, you might feel a smidge of pain, but…" Vlad smiled in mock-apology down at the child. "…cruel to be kind, dear boy. You'd thank me if you knew why."

For a moment, he held his gaze. Challenged Daniel to wake up and protest his fate.

 _beep. beep. beep._

Vlad's smile turned ugly.

"Very well, then," he chirped. He sank his hand low, lower, past the dermis, and—

 _beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep._

Vlad let out a cry of surprise at the sudden noise, yanking his hand back as if Daniel had bitten him. What?! His heart wasn't supposed to stop _yet!_ Vlad hadn't even _brushed_ the stupid thing!

What was happening…? There was no sign that Daniel's heart had given out. One second, he had been just fine; then the next he was _dead?_ Just like _that?_

Pointed ears pricked. There were nurses coming.

Ohh, no. He was not about to deal with this, not _now._ He wanted answers.

Vlad had already duplicated himself thrice before they bolted through the door, and if the nurses even saw him, they made little sign. He overshadowed them with the ease of a child sticking his hand into a puppet. The three women stiffened, suddenly as still and constant as the flatline.

The hybrid glared over at the heart monitor, turning it off irritably, before snapping at the overshadowed nurses to leave and not come back. They did as they were told, pulling the door shut behind them.

Vlad ran a hand through his hair in agitation.

"And you, Daniel," he said aloud, making to look back down. "What exactly has become of _y—"_

He never finished his sentence, because Daniel's face suddenly looked very different, as if some sort of white light was shining under his skin. Vlad stooped down, brow furrowing, as the light glowed brighter.

And brighter.

And _brighter._

Vlad had to blink and turn away quickly, before the light became too blinding to stand. He stepped back from the offending display and screwed his eyes shut, but soon that too was useless. He grimaced, shielding himself with his cape, brain pounding to keep up-

But then the glow warped, flattening into a solid white halo at Daniel's thin waist. Vlad opened his eyes again and gaped as the halo split, forming two rings that flowed up and down the teen's body in a way that was eerily familiar.

The hybrid dropped his cape, shell-shocked.

* * *

Jack was in the lab, goggles pulled down, absentmindedly fiddling with some wiring on one of their old projects.

"I forgot we were working on that one," Maddie commented avertedly, tidying up around Jack's workspace. The burly man made an affirmative noise, the corners of his mouth twitching southward. Maddie stared up at him.

"Jack…"

Jack wedged the teal-lensed goggles up to his forehead, revealing grey-brown eyes that were cloudy with discomfort. Maddie looked away, realizing Danny had stopped midway through his chores, and decided to do the rest in his absence. It was best not to press Jack when he had something on his mind.

She was halfway through gathering up beakers when Jack spoke up. "I can't help but feel like I could've done something. Baby, I—I showed him the portal yesterday, and he knew it was a bust." Jack rubbed the graying back of his head. "I feel like I should've told him that just because it wasn't working didn't mean it was _safe_."

"He should've known that already, though." Maddie shook her head, frustration threatening to rear its ugly head again. "His _friends_ should have known, too. We've told them all hundreds of times, the lab is not their playground. They _dared_ him to go in, and he took the dare." She lifted her hands. _"Aggravating_ as it is, that's all there is to it."

"Yeah, but Mads—c'mon, don't you think I did _something_ wrong there?" Jack wrung his gloved hands, head hung low. Maddie knew that body language like the back of her hand—he wanted something to blame, but he felt that thing was himself. It was the same look he got whenever Social Services came by because a paranoid parent had freaked. When Jack got that look, it didn't really matter if Maddie told him that it wasn't his fault; that the kids were just screwing around, or that the neighbors just weren't very understanding. He'd believe what he believed.

"We'll just have to be more careful, Jack. Okay?" Maddie stepped closer, bringing Jack's face back into the light. He stared down at her in worry. "We'll have to talk to Danny about lab equipment regulations and when to use the tech. His friends are _not_ coming back down here for a long, long time, either. But then the lesson's learned, and we'll be back to normal. We all will. Okay, Jack…?"

The two stayed rooted for a few stuck, arduous moments. They knew that this wasn't the end of it, not by a long shot, but Maddie was confident things would be okay. Looking at Jack, she knew he didn't presently feel the same—not with his child in a hospital bed.

"Okay?"

Jack sighed heavily, grasping the hand Maddie held on his face. "Okay."

Maddie let go to hug him, a little comforted when he returned the motion genuinely. They held each other like that for a little bit, standing numbly a few feet away from the Portal that had caused their current problem.

"Things won't change when Danny gets back, Jack. I _promise_ they won't."

* * *

He reached out, fingers quivering as they glanced against Daniel's cheek.

The boy was _floating,_ a good foot and a half over the gurney, body still thrumming out a frigid glow. His skin was perfect, with none of the Lichtenberg figures he'd sported earlier, but it was now a rich hypothermic blue instead of ocher. Dull black hair had blanched to a perfect frosty white. In place of a pale hospital gown, Daniel now wore a black-and-white FentonWorks hazmat suit. His eyes were still closed, but they glowed so obviously under his eyelids—pupilless white irises surrounded by aqua-blue sclera, like circlets of ice in the Arctic Sea.

Vlad's mouth had long since gone dry when he tried to push Daniel back down onto the gurney, feeling an urge to correct at least _something_ about the surreal picture before him.

"Dani…el…Daniel, what's become of you…"

He staggered back and half-fell, half-sank into the chair behind him. Bloodred eyes boggled, owl-like, as he tried to kick-start his brain to work again.

The…the…come on. The temperature in the room and the glow around Daniel could only suggest spectral biology. So he was a ghost. But this, Vlad reasoned, was _not_ how ghosts formed naturally. If Daniel really had died, then his corpse and his ghost would not be one.

Vlad felt his core give a jump, ectoplasm jolting with steadily-increasing energy. Maddie's words came surging back, much clearer now:

 _"Jazz said he went into the portal and—and turned it on."_

A portal accident. A spirit that hadn't left its corpse. A transformation from living human _into_ a spirit. All things Vlad knew the relationship between, all too well.

 _Oh, god in Heaven._

* * *

As of this writing, chapter 2 and multiple snippets of future chapters are well underway. Also, a review wouldn't hurt!


	2. Our Lives

_It had passed in a flash, though it could have lasted years, and the teen wouldn't have been any the wiser. He still felt it now, though it'd died down to a phantom pain, and he wasn't sure whether to pass it off as normal or not._

 _It felt like somewhere, just under the skin, he'd been sheared of something vital. The ectoplasm had dissolved it like a bone in acid, but he didn't know what it was, even in its absence. At some point, he realized his body couldn't handle it—that he was struggling to breathe, and couldn't move or open his eyes; couldn't even rack up the will or energy to. Speaking was out of the question._

 _Someone drifted around him, talking about something that sounded important, but it felt like he was wrapped up tight in a thick black cloth. Whatever came through was too muffled to make him want to know or care about it. Everything felt so…so unimportant. So worldly. The feeling under his skin told him that the person's concerns wouldn't apply to him soon._

 _Then the fresh, smarting feeling gave way to a dredge of cool, refreshing numbness, and he let go, light as a feather. The chill was so relieving, the way it pulsed in his chest and curled up tight in his muscles and seeped out to the suffocating air around him. Surely this couldn't be so bad…_

 _Someone above him was still speaking softly. A warm, heavy hand pressed down on his ribs, infringing the chill—as if he'd float away to somewhere nicer if he wasn't stopped._

 _Black blankets cracked, giving way to a spill of light, and float away he did, away from the hands and back to the numb, lovely cold…_

Danny woke up.

His first thought pertained to all the _white_. Everything was way, way too white. He groaned, lifting a hand to shield his eyes—

Only to realize it was glowing.

Danny flinched, a double-take and rapid blinking confirming that yes, yes his hand _was_ glowing. Glowing and _blue._ His legs glowed, too. And his feet. And his chest. And the black hazmat suit he was wearing—all bathed in a foggy, pulsing white.

He made a motion to sit up, but it felt like he was rolling in a tank of water. Confused, Danny looked down.

The bed he'd _assumed_ he'd been laying on was actually a good three feet under him.

As if on some nervous command, Danny's scrawny body dropped, and he landed rear-first onto the mattress. He bolted up, and wondered why he couldn't feel his heartbeat, or his fingers, or his legs.

Suddenly he shrieked. Where his legs were supposed to be was now just a translucent _tail_ that writhed like a huge black worm when Danny tried to kick. He tried desperately to will it away, along with the glow and the suit and what he now registered as not _his_ bed, but a _hospital_ one—

Unbidden, all his struggling earned him was floating a few inches upward, like a boy-shaped balloon. Danny whimpered fearfully, panicked tears threatening to spill—

No! No, no, no! He'd—he'd _died!_ He was a _ghost! No—_

Before he could panic any further, he felt a hard, sobering jump in his chest. The glow of his person suddenly became more intense, dousing him in a blast of cold air, and bringing up a sallow ache that he seemed to remember. He fell back to the bed again, dressed in a hospital gown, and not glowing in any sense of the word.

The small teen laid there, stunned, as his relocated heartbeat skipped in his chest. He—he _wasn'_ t a ghost. He was…he was alive, and the accident hadn't _killed_ him. But then, why had he _thought_ he was a ghost? Why that feeling? Why that _floating?_

"Hallucinations" occurred to him, and it _seemed_ legit, but Jazz had discussed hallucinations more than once, in an attempt to get Danny to use the term in a more medically correct fashion. And… _that…_ whatever had happened…didn't fit the bill for a hallucination at all.

Danny felt a lump rise in his throat, one question repeating in his mind like a mob chant-

 _What just happened?!_

* * *

No matter how you sliced it, this sucked.

Tucker's frown deepened as his fingers flew, tapping mindlessly into his laptop. He and Sam had apparently concluded that this was a _great_ time to get on their summer homework, even though they couldn't focus and they both knew it. The duo had gotten some pretty prize looks when they'd traipsed into the Nasty Burger, pulled out their report papers, and went to work without a word. That had been an hour ago, and no one around them had asked any questions, which made Tucker wonder. If he was lucky, he'd get some texts about it, but it wasn't very likely; no one texted him except Sam and Danny.

Aaaaaand he'd just used a closing tag in Word. Go _him._

Tucker put his chin in his hand. "You're not paying attention to this either, are you?" he inquired, not looking up from his screen. When he realized Sam was listening to music, he snapped his fingers over her tablet. "Yo. Earth to Sam."

Sam's eyes widened, and she pulled her earbuds out, casting him a quizzical look. He repeated what he said.

"Oh. No, no I'm not. How far in are you?"

"I'm on the second page, but I got started when we got the thing."

"I'm still on my first body paragraph."

"Ah. Understandable."

"But I mean, we _do_ have all summer."

"Yeah."

They nodded awkwardly, surveying the diner. Most of its current patrons fellow freshmen-to-be who were accustomed to the Danny-Sam-and-Tucker trio.

"I think they think we're dating now," Tucker remarked as dryly as possible as he spotted Paulina and Star in a family booth. The two turned back to each other, giggling—which Tucker would have loved in any other context, but now it was just annoying. Sam nodded grimly, cocking a brow.

"Naturally. We can't _all_ date every boy in our clique, though." Sam looked around the room before giving them a quick middle-finger from behind her cup. Tucker snickered.

"I'm gonna go get a refill," Sam announced, standing.

"Take your time?" Tucker suggested, half-smiling.

And then the table was deserted for a handful of seconds, since Danny wasn't there to keep up the conversation. Tucker sunk down in the booth, drumming his fingers on his laptop.

In truth…when it got to the heart of the matter, it didn't always feel like the Danny-Sam-and-Tucker trio was an actual _trio._ Tucker hung out with Danny who hung out with Sam, who had grown used to Tucker, who had grown used to Sam for the sake of Danny, who liked them both. Not that they couldn't count on each other, because they did—but the friendship bracelets had been exchanged with a little hesitance, and they took photos with Danny in the center, as if to symbolize the fact that they were sharing him and nothing more. Tucker had always been fine with that.

But Danny was in the hospital right now, not goofing off with them. And Tucker and Sam didn't really have anyone to blame but themselves.

He could tell Sam was thinking the same thing when she came back with her lemonade. Still, the booth was silent as a tomb. If they acknowledged Danny's absence, then they had to acknowledge that the accident was their fault, and _then_ they had to acknowledge that they weren't best friends when he wasn't there. _Or,_ if they were really feeling like it, they could bring up that they were sitting in the Nasty Burger while their _actual_ best friend was suffering God-knows-what. Which was worse, Tucker didn't know.

Again—this _sucked._

* * *

"Danielle Fenton?"

Danny stared flatly at the nurse. "I prefer Danny."

The young man cocked a brow and gave him a once-over, before humming in affirmation and turning to his partner, who'd busied herself with replacing the IV in his arm. Danny frowned when she muttered something about "must've been out for hours or something".

Maybe it was petty, but it didn't do a thing for him to know that he'd woken up in the middle of the night and no one had said anything 'til morning. Didn't that violate some kind of hospitals rule? If he'd been someone else, he could have died.

 _Well, maybe I_ am _dead, so I don't know._

"Do you have a history of sleepwalking, Danny? Or tossing and turning?" the nurse asked, flipping a page on the clipboard he was holding. He made a knowing face at a detail on the sheet, probably where Danny's blockers were listed. "You did a pretty good number on your IV and your breathing tube both."

"Uh, not that I know of." Danny sunk further into the mattress, frowning. He had a pretty good idea that it wasn't tossing and turning that'd done it. He'd seen more than one ghost phase through walls when his parents went careening after them; he wouldn't put it past himself to have not accidentally phased something foreign out of himself in his sleep. At least, not right now he didn't.

Or had he become…yeah…when he woke _up,_ and _then_ phased the tubes out? He didn't know, and in all honesty he didn't care. He still had to figure out what was up with himself; if this was a near-death experience, or ectoplasmic radiation symptoms, or something else. And if it was something else…

 _That'll be fun to explain to Mom and Dad,_ he thought to himself, before recoiling as the breathing tube approached his nose too quickly.

"Thanks, but no thanks."

The nurse gave him an eye. "You've been breathing steadily? No chest pressure or lightheadedness?"

"Yeah. I mean, no. I mean-"

"Are you _sure?"_

"I have a bunch of mucus going on, but that's it. You guys have a Kleenex?"

The first nurse snorted a little at the cheek as the second propped a tissue box on Danny's lap, and hesitantly announced that she would keep the breathing machine in the room "just in case". The next few minutes were relatively silent as the nurses examined Danny, interrupted only by brief instructions and pencil scribbles.

Finally, they leaned back, and exchanged a look that had Danny frowning.

"What? What is it?"

"Well…" the first started a little hesitantly, "it looks like you've had one heck of a recovery, kiddo. You skipped a burn degree overnight. That's kind of incredible." Then he smiled. "Heck, that's _really_ incredible."

Danny made a surprised face and looked away. "Huh."

Truth be told, he didn't exactly feel the best. A fullbody burn was a fullbody burn, no matter _what_ degree it was. Any way he turned, he was greeted with firy, prickling discomfort that made his skin dry up and eyes water. They hadn't given him any painkillers yet, but if they weren't planning on it...well, they were going to hear about it, either from Danny himself or from his family.

Speaking of which-

"Where are my Mom and Dad?" Danny changed the subject, searching the nurses' faces. "Are they talking with the doctors or something?"

The man and woman exchanged another glance and suddenly didn't look very comfortable. "We sent out a call as soon as you woke up," one explained gently.

"...Oh. Okay."

 _The hospital must have a thing about people staying overnight,_ Danny reassured himself. _Or Dad got kicked out because of a weapons issue again. Probably better they didn't stay anyway._

It didn't do much in the way of reassuring.

* * *

Vlad had wanted to scream, but he couldn't.

He had wanted to dance and cry and laugh and roar, but he couldn't. He had wanted to be held, preferably by Maddie, and he had wanted to kill somebody, preferably Jack, but all he could do was hang invisibly on the ceiling and watch as Danny woke up.

Danny had floated and flailed, staring up at him with those brilliant blue eyes before they flicked back to black, and the poor child looked about ready to have a panic attack. He knew. The boy knew what he was now, almost as well as Vlad did.

 _Hybrid. Human-ghost hybrid._

The word had crowded Vlad's head painfully, until he didn't know _what_ to make of it. It had happened again. Another human being now knew the pain of their soul being sheared in two, of becoming the truest of freaks, of striving so desperately for _normalcy_ only to have a chance of it slapped from their hands. His population had doubled tonight to make room for this plain, tiny teenager.

A few feet under him, Danny's burns had begun to eat at him again, and Vlad had wished that he would sleep. He had wanted to inspect him, to rub his hair, feel his surely-healing cheeks, talk to him, listen to his core blossom within him. It was all he could take that the child needed to remain here, prohibiting him from returning home with the young stranger tucked in his arms.

He'd fantasized about finding another hybrid, back when he was young and desperate and foolish, but he never thought it would happen like _this._ Now, the fantasies were back with a vengeance, poisoning his ectoplasm with ravenous glee.

Vlad had waited too long for a companion, and now he was _going_ to have it. What's more, he would take it from Jack. Yes…he and Daniel would unite and crush Jack the way he was meant to be crushed. Then, they would coax Jasmine and his dear Maddie over to his side as well, and the Masters family would finally be burden-free, and happy, and _real._

That was a lot of "would"s. But oh, such lovely, promising "would"s too…

He'd have to start planning immediately, if he wanted Daniel before the boy was emancipated.

But for now, he was a guest at FentonWorks.

Jack had all but knocked him over when he'd come to the door, still in grey-and-green ghost pajamas, thick arms constricting Vlad until he was sure he'd pass out. Eyes wide, Maddie had given Vlad a list of breathless questions and scoldings—abandoning his companies on such short notice _and_ coming first thing in the morning, he really didn't have to do that—to which Vlad had every counter happily memorized. When Jasmine had come down a half-hour later, it had been most amusing to see the girl's sleepy eyes wrench open at the sight of the richest man on the planet in the kitchen, sipping coffee with her parents.

It almost made up for the realization that Jasmine hadn't had the slightest clue that he was her and Daniel's godfather. Almost.

He chatted mindlessly with them as he considered the place. A visitor would have to have the thickest of skulls to walk in and out and not know the Fenton profession. If the gaudy neon sign and futuristic observatory mounted on the roof weren't enough, blueprints and gadgets were mounted and strewn anywhere one looked. Even a copy of the Portal sketch had made its way onto the refrigerator, tacked up rather obviously over a few photos and good grades of the children's. Good Lord. Daniel actually _lived_ this way?

 _…Daniel…_

Mention of the name ignited a warm flicker in Vlad's heart that hadn't been there a couple days ago. Daniel. His new fellow hybrid, oh, he already missed him. He'd have to see him again, as quickly as he could manage. Hopefully his lack of ecto-acne meant that he wouldn't be confined to the hospital much longer…

But in the meantime, perhaps he could find the means to steal up to his room? Collect some much-needed notes on the boy, before he could return and no doubt hole up there as he healed…?

Considering how intent Jack was to catch up with his "college pal", that could be problematic. Vlad repressed a shudder.

About an hour passed before the souped-up landline rang, and Maddie hastily delivered the news: Daniel was awake, breathing normally, with a stable condition. The nurse that had been put on speaker sounded impressed. Seemed the child had recovered handsomely overnight. The hospital saw no reason to keep him.

Jack, Maddie, and Jasmine were practically beside themselves with relief, and hung up to get ready right as the nurse tried to warn them about the precautions they'd have to take. Vlad just sighed with relief. It was good Daniel would be out so soon. A lengthy hospital stay could throw quite the wrench in his latent scheme.

He waited downstairs until he finally picked up the sound of a shower running-not without some impatient bickering, of course-and smirked to himself. He wouldn't even need to ask if he could go with them; even if he refused, Jack would drag him to the car by the ponytail all the same. Dear Daniel would finally meet his godfather, and his plans could begin to gel.

But while he was here, Daniel's room was just waiting to be examined...

* * *

The feedback I've been getting recently has had a handsome effect on my mojo, so I ended up fulfilling my goal of posting this chapter before the end of junior year! Huzzah!

Danny's coping with snark, Sam and Tucker are shook, and Vlad is Up To Something™. Things'll move more quickly after the hospital, but the next chapter will shine a little more light on the Fenton family.

 **EDIT** 5/16/17: Oh-and little note that the nurse called Danny "Danielle" because Danny's transgender. Just to clear up any confusion. Lemme know if there are other things!


	3. Knowledge Is

I just wanted to thank you guys for the reviews, and apologize for the weird schedule while I'm at it. I got a job immediately after summer school finished (way faster than I planned, but it was out of my hands), so that's taken up a lot of my time. HOWEVER! I'm happy to reveal chapter 3 at long last.

Enjoy!

* * *

Vlad decided to phase his way upstairs, rather than call attention to himself by walking. To his satisfaction—and amusement—the room he was looking for wasn't difficult to find. A stenciled sign that read "DANNY'S ROOM" was stuck in the center of the last door in the hallway, complimented by a few star stickers. He phased inside with a smirk.

It certainly looked like a teenaged boy's room, with a full hamper and a predictable amount of clutter mounded on the furniture. Young Daniel certainly followed in his parent's footsteps when it came to self-expression: cerulean walls were absolutely _covered_ with astronaut, rocket, and space posters, and a few craft spaceships were set up in various places. Vlad glanced up to find the whole ceiling dotted with glow-in-the-dark stars— a few packages' worth at least—arranged deliberately in what must have been a star chart. He raised his eyebrows, mildly impressed.

Hands folded behind his back, he toed his way through the room, noting the ratty summer blanket on the bed and a collection of burn holes in the wall. He needed knowledge of Danny, yes, but he also needed leverage—miseries in Danny's short life that he could combat and cure. He pulled open the nightstand drawer and found a couple burnt-ended ecto-blasters, no doubt "gifts" from Jack. Perhaps they'd been damaged before Danny had ever gotten them, thus inefficiently equipping him against poltergeists? Or Danny _wanted_ Jack to fix them but was scared to ask…? He shut the drawer, making a note in his mind.

The glassless window-shape cut out of the wall made Vlad boggle for a couple of seconds, but it was far from the _most_ bizarre thing in the house, so he turned his attention to dingy grey sling pack below it. Danny's backpack, perhaps…? He sat down on the bed and pulled it into his lap.

Yes, definitely a backpack. Vlad thanked his lucky stars that Danny had apparently been saving an after-school recycling spree for the end of summer. Smiling, he leafed through the rumpled papers and star-covered folders, taking care not to disrupt the order anything had been found in.

Well, Daniel was certainly abysmal with English. He frowned at the red-stained essays he found; it was a shame, the boy had such lovely handwriting. It was difficult to find someone who appreciated cursive these days. He was relieved to find that Danny's math homework was almost perfect, as was—to no surprise—his science grade. Vlad snickered, picturing what kind of experience Daniel and Jasmine's science teachers must have had.

He flipped through the rest of the backpack, catching himself from extracting a half-finished water bottle before replacing it against the wall. Investigating the dresser drawers, the apple didn't fall far from the tree in the way of clothing, either—thankfully, the entire thing was hazmat-free, but it seemed Danny's entire wardrobe consisted of duplicates of his favorite white-and-red shirt and rolled-up blue jeans. Vlad let out the breath he'd been holding to find dress pants and a couple oxford shirts in his closet.

Glancing over to the small laptop on Danny's desk across the room, Vlad wondered at it, but left it alone. He was on a tight schedule, and could bug the computer tonight if he wanted to. Not sure what else to do, he drummed his fingers on the edge of the dresser until a fingernail slipped, tapping against a dense, soft plastic-feeling object. He glanced down, and promptly drew in a breath, grabbing it gently.

"Vlad?"

The man turned to the sound of Maddie's voice, and he hastily tucked his hand into an inside pocket before crossing the room. Jarring the door as gently as he could, he called back.

"I'm down here, Maddie dear."

Maddie came up behind Vlad just as he finished propping himself up at the doorframe, looking as if he'd merely been gazing into the room. "I didn't hear you come up," she said with surprise, drying her hair with a towel.

Vlad smiled down at her. "My apologies. I was merely…curious."

Maddie shrugged her shoulders, settling a few inches from the billionaire and facing the threshold herself. Vlad considered the woman for a moment. The look of motherly worry in her brow and the shine of her eyes made her appear even more beautiful, as far as he was concerned.

"He'll be alright, Maddie. We'll get him through it," he reassured. "We all will."

He waited for a reaction—gratitude, or notice of how he cared for the boy—but he never got one.

* * *

Danny surveyed his surroundings, heart thrumming.

If he were the quitting type, he would've dismissed the whole "ghost" business, and chalked it up to hallucinations after all. But he would not, could not, ignore that something had been different since he'd woken up. Something was simply not _right._

He remembered thinking as a little kid that the dark side of the moon had no surface. That the whole thing had just been hollowed out, like a ladle. He felt very much the same now, as if he was the light side of the moon, but would eventually wane into…something. Something more nebulous.

The thought arose, not for the first time, to simply confide in his mom and dad when they arrived. And, not for the first time, it was shot back down. They'd thought he or Jazz were ghosts on less evidence before, which typically resulted in ambush or being held at ecto-gunpoint. It'd never do. Danny at _least_ wanted to gather his facts before acting on them—that was a scientific process thing, right? But that begged the question—how was he going to _get_ those facts in the first place?

He shivered as he felt his chest grow colder, and then stopped when he realized that the cold was coming from inside, not out. Wiping his mind blank, he stared as far downwards as he could, until the cold was snuggled placidly between his lungs.

 _I gotta do it. I gotta try._

Sitting up with a wince, Danny thought hard at his chest, directing as much willpower towards the cold feeling as he could. It doubled readily, sweeping a numb, liquid feeling into his torso that bled into his limbs.

The teen gasped, but the air around him didn't stir. The arctic feeling wound around his fingertips and Danny gulped on nothing as they began to glow, mirroid to the situation last night.

Oh Jesus. This was it. This was it. This was—

 _"DANNY!"_

The fourteen-year-old half-coughed, half-shrieked as wind rushed back to him so hard he felt his lungs would pop. He looked up wildly in time to see a telltale blur of orange and blue coming for him, and then hands and shoulders were pressing on his burned skin way, way too hard—

 _"Burns!"_ he gasped. "Mom, Dad, I have _burns_ there— "

"Oh!" his parents yelped, drawing away almost as fast as they had come. Jack cursed quietly, Maddie wringing her hands as she sat back on the edge of the mattress.

"Sweetie, I completely forgot— "

"'S okay, I just— "

"We're just glad you woke up so fast, Danny-boy!" Jack cut in, getting his son's attention. The man gave him a bright smile. "That's a Fenton, no ghost energy can keep us down!"

"That's right!" Maddie agreed. She pulled down the hood of her hazmat suit, giving Danny a full-on mom-glare. "But that doesn't mean you're invincible, young man. Don't you _ever_ do something that reckless again."

Danny just stared, gears still cranking in his head. Slowly, his head lowered, and Danny realized that the ghostly glow his fingers had had wasn't there anymore.

All caught up, he leaned back onto the mattress. "What, and miss all this adventure?" he quipped.

Maddie shot her son a long-suffering look, earning nothing but a laugh. Jazz took the opportunity to join the growing crowd around Danny's bed.

"He's coping with humor, Mom," she stated matter-of-factly. "It's perfectly natural."

Danny rolled his eyes, but paused before he could supply another comment. His eyes caught the entryway behind his parents.

The two men in the threshold strolled forward, taking different places at Danny's now-cramped bedside. The one who took a place by Jazz was Danny's doctor, of course, but the man that sidled up behind his parents to stand closer than they did, Danny didn't know.

Maddie looked to the stranger, then back to Danny soberly. "Um, Danny…we mentioned you kids have a godfather, right?"

"No."

"Well, you do." She nodded at the stranger.

He was medium-to-tall and wearing the most oddly well-tailored tuxedo Danny had ever seen. If his looks didn't reek money enough, he was standing ruler-straight, hands clasped regally behind his back. It was hard to guess how old he was—his silver ponytail and goatee spoke for themselves, but his face placed him around Jack and Maddie's age.

"Vladimir Anatolyovich Masters, CEO of Mastermind Enterprises," Vladimir Anatolyovich Masters, CEO of Mastermind Enterprises, announced. He leaned into Danny with a playful smile. "I usually shake hands when I say that, my boy, but I'll hold off on that given your current situation."

The teen didn't answer, preferring to goggle at him with a slack jaw.

No way. No _freakin'_ way. He was within touching distance of Vlad Richest-Man-Alive, Mega-Corporate-Tycoon, Suit-More-Expensive-Than-Danny's-Entire-Life Masters. And the dude was his… his…?

"Am I being punked?" he asked Jazz, pointing a finger at the billionaire.

"You wouldn't be the first one today," Jazz remarked, crossing her arms. "Mom and Dad knew him in college, but he's the only one who seems to have retained communication skills."

Jack didn't notice the pointed look his daughter was shooting. "Vladdy and I were roommates! Us three were the terrible trio up at Wisconsin-Madison in the early nineties. Worked up a storm with our ghost research, and, eh," he leaned on the guardrail with a smug look, "not to brag, but we were pretty popular doin' it, too."

"If you say so, Jack." Masters said evenly, clearly not sharing the sentiment. His smile returned quickly as he glanced back at Danny and Jazz. "Besides, at the moment, I'm much more interested in the present—and namely, my godchildren."

At this, he pinched the empty corner of Danny's sleeve affectionately—a painless alternative, Danny realized, to touching his shoulder. The guy probably picked it up from visiting kids for Make A Wish or something.

Danny's doctor cleared his throat, effectively getting the family's attention. "Mind if I cut in?" he asked.

"Sooner I get to leave, the better," Danny affirmed.

The doctor chuckled. "Well, don't be _too_ rushed, now. We still have to go over some things with your folks before you're safe to leave." With that, he turned to his parents, bringing up his clipboard as he spoke.

Danny tuned out of most of it, instead opting to sneak a glance at Masters. Something was really…strange about the guy, like he was exuding something that normal people don't. Something familiar, but Danny couldn't put his figure on it, exactly.

Maybe it was just that he was who he was. Danny shook his head, marveling inwardly.

A sky-high billionaire, rich beyond Danny's wildest dreams, knew his parents during college. Who knew?

* * *

"I'm not saying the Fenton-Wiesel wasn't a good idea, sweetie, but don't you think it's a little bulky for on-the-go? We need something more compact, especially if we can store it in the RV."

"Doesn't seem bulky on me, but since it _is_ two-handed, it's hard to carry the Fenton-Wiesel and an ecto-cannon at the same time…I dunno, maybe we can just put straps on the thing and call it a day."

Jazz tuned out of her parents, scrawling furiously in her notebook.

 _Vladimir Anatolyovich Masters-40 yrs (2016)-_ _Godfather- CEO of Mastermind- Birthdate?_

 _Knew Mom & Dad in college_

 _Russian heritage(?), research pending_

She chewed her eraser a little before continuing.

 _In weak/no contact (too busy with job?)_

 _Not married, no children_

 _Acts polite, obviously trained in speaking to families_

She paused for a moment to consider Mr. Masters.

The man purported to be her godfather was sitting across from her, on the same bench as Danny. Her little brother was still understandably weak, even with his suspiciously fast recovering time, and Mr. Masters had beaten her to sitting with him. She begrudged it at first out of protectiveness, but Danny had groaned and told her it'd be fine, and Mr. Masters had reassured her that Danny was in good hands, so she was outruled by number _and_ social convention. She frowned, sifting that information through her mind. It wasn't enough to consider valid data yet…

…Oh, what the heck. It _was_ a little early to be profiling him, but a good psychologist takes notes on the first impression too, right? Besides, this was just a preliminary—she'd add the polished notes to her laptop when the time came. Jazz added _Paternal instincts?_ and _Used to debating his side_ to the list.

The RV went over a speed bump, yielding a yelp of pain from Danny's side.

Jazz perked up in alarm to see Mr. Masters seize Danny by the shirt sleeve, keeping him from jostling his seatbelt any further. Danny readjusted himself slowly, face twisting in pain. Catching Jazz's eye, he smiled and gave her a weak thumbs-up, purposefully not closing his fist all the way. She smiled back, silently apologizing that their parents had forgotten to stock the RV with an icepack.

Again, Mr. Masters watched the two. And again, he gently squeezed the corner of Danny's shirt, this time murmuring words of sympathy and promises of rest back at the house. Danny gave him an odd look, indicative of the fierce independence Jazz dealt with regularly, but seemed to acquiesce.

Jazz analyzed Mr. Masters critically. The man was exhibiting more tenderness than Jazz had seen in Danny's orbit in a long, long time, despite never having seen either of the siblings before today. Curious…

Her genius mind drifted to the time that she'd needed tubes in her ears taken out, and their parents had stayed in the hospital for hours until she'd woken up. Last night, Mom and Dad hadn't even walked into the hospital—and they had their reasons, Jazz knew that, but, well…what kind of message was Danny _supposed_ to get?

By contrast, Mr. Masters had been polite, but not overly warm with Jazz, and was treating Danny like a baby bird with an injured wing. She was surprised she wasn't _jealous—_ Mr. Masters wasn't just a godfather, he was an investment; a good word with him and could get her into an Ivy League university by tomorrow if she wanted it. She knew kids at school who'd saw their foot off to be the apple of this man's eye, but Mr. Masters seemed to have chosen Danny. Jazz wondered why that was, but that could come with further investigation

As the RV pulled into the driveway, Jazz smiled and scribbled another note into her notebook.

 _Favoritism of Danny_

Jazz had the adoration of her parents, her teachers, and most every adult and honors student in the Casper school district. Danny could have Vlad Masters.

Jack and Maddie were still bantering about inventions as Maddie unlocked the door, leaving Jazz and Mr. Masters to make sure Danny was strong enough to walk. The two kept to him like bodyguards as Jack held the door open.

Jazz smiled down at her little brother . "I can get you some soup or something if you're up to eating, Danny—"

"Soup?" their father interrupted them. He put a finger to his chin, oblivious to the foursome staring at him.

"Soup…soup…thermos! Thermos! I'll be right—"

The orange-suited man let go of the door, leaving Mr. Masters to shoot out a hand before it could slam on the trio in the threshold. When he pushed it back, Maddie was gone as well, two sets of footsteps clearly audible on the steps to the basement.

"Do they do that often?" Mr. Masters asked bemusedly. Jazz and Danny exchanged a flat look.

"You have no idea," they drawled in unison.

Yeah. Danny would need all the favoritism he could get.

* * *

"You don't have to sit here the whole time, Mr. Masters…"

The billionaire glanced up from the book he was reading and smiled reassuringly.

"Nonsense, dear boy. Wouldn't want to upset your health any further with trips around the house."

"But I really do feel better already," Danny protested, flexing his wrists. He _was_ pretty winded, but his point stood. He could barely feel the actual burns, if he didn't move around a lot.

"I know, I know—but with your parents working downstairs, your sister shouldn't have to play nurse. Besides," he settled back in Danny's computer chair, propping his feet up on the bed, "I'm rather cozy right here, thank you."

Danny snorted and shrugged, glancing at the book Masters had grabbed.

"I wouldn't peg you to read _The Exorcist."_

"Neither would I," Masters replied, flipping a page regardless. "but it's the closest thing to classic you appear to have with you, dear boy. I take it you've grown an appreciation for horror?"

Guilty as charged. "That kind of stuff runs in the family," he agreed.

"Really? You don't have anything ghost-related on your shelf."

"Too close to home." The teen craned his neck to spy at the shelf above his computer, where a plethora of horror movies and a few selfsame novels were stocked. "I _try_ to enjoy them, but then I get annoyed because the writers didn't do their research." Research that people like his parents would _really_ appreciate getting more attention. "And I get too focused on that that the plot just seems kind of stupid, y'know?"

Masters seemed to consider this genuinely before lifting _The Exorcist._ "I wonder if priests feel the same about literature like this."

"Especially considering that the dude it was based off of was probably faking being possessed for attention."

The billionaire raised an eyebrow at him in amusement. Danny flushed a little, if that was possible with burnt cheeks. "I like to look up behind-the-scenes stuff sometimes," he admitted.

"Knowledge is power, dear boy. No shame in that," Masters replied. They exchanged a smile before they returned to their occupations, Masters to _The Exorcist_ and Danny to his laptop.

Again, Danny had to reflect on the nature of the man a few feet from him. It was easy to believe his parents had forgotten to tell him something as important as having a godfather. But _Vlad Masters,_ though? Danny had seen pictures of the man in the news, and listened to his voice on recorded speeches about economics in school on Career Day. And shouldn't the family have been in contact with Masters in the first place? Unless Danny didn't have the full story…

When dinner came, he broke the ice.

"How did you and Mom n' Dad know each other?" Danny inquired as Masters stepped back into the room.

Masters stopped eyeing the drive-thru bags distrustfully, and turned to Danny as he set a plate and a cup on his nightstand.

"I suppose this'll have to do," he said distractedly, handing him one of the bags. "What do you mean 'how', my boy? I believe Jack told you we were roommates."

"Yeah, but, like, what'd you guys do? Where'd Mom come in? You know, stories. Stuff like that."

Masters sat back in the computer chair as Danny ripped into his bag, unwrapping his burger and plopping it on the plate.

"Well," Masters began, folding his hands in his lap. "Jack and I were both theoretical physics majors. We…I began sharing notes with him, and when it was discovered that we both adore the Packers, we began talking more casually. Then I revealed that I sought to use my knowledge of science in the name of spectrology, and, well...you know your father."

Danny snorted quietly. If by "you know your father", he meant "I couldn't get him to shut up after that", he believed every word so far.

"We were the dearest of friends. We shared a room, lab equipment, couches at parties—now, mind you, we weren't near as popular as your father likes to think," Masters added, opening his own drive-thru bag.

"Dad's tales are usually as tall as he is."

Masters chuckled. "I suppose he's not changed much. As for when we met your mother…"

Something changed in the sharp, straight structure of the man's face.

"She was a distant friend of Jack's," he continued, tone taking on a softer flavor. "They both grew up in Arkansas, but I assume you already knew that."

Danny swallowed a bite of burger unceremoniously. "They don't really tell me much, Mr. Masters."

The billionaire held up a hand. "Call me Vlad, dear boy. My constituents call me Mr. Masters. Now, apparently Jack and Maddie lived in different towns, but they both had the "small-town séance" experience, as your mother eloquently put it. Childhood experiences with ghosts, that later fueled their love of ghost research."

"Did you have the small-town séance experience too?" Danny wondered, popping a fry in his mouth. Masters nodded.

"I grew up in Green Bay, but otherwise, yes. I often saw ghost animals around my home that my parents could not." Now the soft tone was gone, and Danny was starting to wonder if he shouldn't have asked about Masters' childhood. " _They_ fascinated me the most in life, and I sought to know more about them…your parents obviously felt the same way. Together we were far from popular, save Maddie, but we _were_ rather notorious for our ghost-hunting antics."

Danny smiled, imagining younger versions of Jack, Maddie, and Vlad tearing up some campus in Wisconsin looking for ghosts, the way the former two did in the present. As he took another bite from his burger, he realized something.

"How come you stopped?"

"Pardon?"

"How come you stopped ghost research?"

Masters, who had apparently been focused on resigning himself to his dinner, looked up with a carefully neutral expression. He sat back in his chair, apparently lost in thought. The teen didn't let up, black eyes trained into averted cobalt ones.

"Well," Masters began carefully, "I…didn't."

He held up a hand to cut Danny off before he could start rambling.

"I _don't_ do research to the same ends as your parents, now," he clarified, closing the raised hand and meeting Danny's eye. "However, I suppose that it's hard to put down ghost research once you've picked it up. It's _... come in handy_ these past years since college."

Danny shot Masters an odd look.

"Meaning…?"

"Meaning what?"

The two males glanced up to find Maddie at the door, a keen expression on her face and something clutched in her free hand.

Masters looked like a very wealthy deer in the headlights for a moment. "Ah…" he began, glancing at Danny a second. "Daniel and I were just discussing our college days. You know, old times, old memories, old inventions…speaking of inventions, what's that you have, my dear?"

Maddie raised a brow, but shrugged a second later and crossed the room to sit on the edge of Danny's bed. She held out the cylinder shape so that Danny and Masters could both see.

"This's the problem we were talking about in the car," she explained excitedly. "A compact version of the Fenton-Wiesel that lets us take care of ghosts in a pinch and study them later."

The thing was nine, maybe ten inches long, and made of the usual dull steel and black rubber grips FentonWorks used. A simple button sat close to the handle, glowing the same green as a rim around the large cap. Maddie turned it over, revealing a transparent bar up the side like a battery. The shape was pretty clearly familiar, in fact, it looked like…

"You and Dad traded up one of the thermoses?" Danny asked dryly. Masters gave a small snort outside Danny's field of vision.

"Jack insisted on the shape," his mother replied curtly. "He wouldn't have it any other way, you know how he is when he has a brainstorm. But if I see this with soup in it, we're going to have to have a talk."

"I'm guessing it _can_ hold soup, then?" Masters asked, smirking in Danny's direction.

"Anything can hold soup if you try hard enough," Danny said matter-of-factly. He smiled up at his mother, who wasn't impressed with either of them if the look on her face told truth.

"Har-har. _Yes,_ it _can,_ but I'd _much_ rather it hold ghosts." She took the thermos in both hands, wringing it slyly. "We just need the right test subject."

"Release something from the Ghost Zone," Masters suggested. "I assume that's what you two built _another_ portal for."

Danny cast the man a bewildered look.

"Wait, what?" he gawked, turning to his mother, who suddenly looked very uncomfortable. " _Another_ portal?"

Maddie's green eyes flicked to Vlad's face for just a second before she bounced her shoulder at Danny. "We all made the first prototype in college for the sake of seeing if it could be done," she acquiesced. "Of course, we now know from our studies that ghosts get into our world by way of naturally-existing portals. As for why we built a second one, Vlad, we need a lot of ectoplasmic energy, doing what we do, and a portal's the only way we can gather it at a constant pace."

There was a lull in the conversation, and Masters and Danny seemed to be thinking the same thing.

Masters cleared his throat. "As opposed to…?"

As opposed to getting energy from ghosts, Danny thought, the cold feeling returning to his chest and rising a bubble in his throat. As opposed to nabbing as many ghosts as possible and melting down the ones that aren't interesting enough to study, and then eventually using those, too, when they figured out how they worked.

Any chance of forgetting the incident when he woke up went flying out the window as Maddie said all this to an unhappy-looking Masters. The billionaire and the teenager met eyes, but Danny wasn't sure what they were exchanging.

"Perhaps we could continue the conversation downstairs, my dear," Masters wondered mildly. "Daniel appears to look a bit peaky at the moment; it's best he finish his meal and rest-"

"I'm fine hearing about it," Danny protested, ripping a bite out of his burger for his mother and Masters to see. It'd gone cold in his hand and he quietly cursed his luck. "I don't scare easy, besides—"

"It's not macabre or creepy to use ghosts as an energy source, Vlad," Maddie finished, waving a hand in dismissal. "You of all people should know how much we had to scrimp for energy sources in college. Using ectoplasm is just a matter of efficiency."

Masters pulled his feet off Danny's bed with a measured expression. "Maddie, ghosts are conscious creatures. Spirits of the deceased."

"They don't have _minds_. We thought they did in college, but our notes prove otherwise. Jack and I'd be happy to show you," Maddie countered.

"If they don't have minds, why can they speak? Why can they make decisions?"

"They're behaving based off of residual memories of their past life—"

"The same way humans make decision based off of memories."

"Vlad, they're not the same as when they were human. They're not nearly as mentally developed." Maddie had started suing her hands in Masters' general direction. Danny just stared at the two of them, liking this conversation less and less.

"I know that," Masters said crisply. "But you can't just assume that ghosts are incapable of acting human. I know of a few— _cases_ where ghosts did exactly that and no commentary was made."

"It's still not the same!" Maddie disagreed. "Vlad, ghosts can't feel _empathy_. They can't learn new things. They can't form relationships. They might be _'conscious',_ " -she used air quotes here- "in a figurative sense, but a ghost is not even close to the original person—"

"So what would happen if someone you knew became a ghost?"

The bubble in Danny's throat solidified as the two adults faced him, brows drawn.

Bad question. Ohhhh that was a bad, bad, _bad_ question, he could just _see_ it on his mom's _face._ Swallowing the dread, Danny proceeded to make it even worse.

"If I'd died in the accident and became a ghost, what would you do?"

Maddie's hand rose to her mouth, eyes filling with horror.

"Oh, _sweetie…!"_

She sunk onto the bed, immediately taking Danny in her arms, burns apparently be damned. She ruffled Danny's hair, not noticing the way he tensed, or the way Masters looked at them both.

"Baby, no, that's-! That's not what I was _talking_ about—"

Danny pushed her away. "But what would you _do?_ Right here, right now, what would you do if I became a ghost?"

Everything in the woman's face pleaded with him not to make her answer that question, but he met her pointedly, not caring. He had to know what she would think. He had to know if she'd pull a gun on him, or lock him onto a table and put his internal organs in jars. If she'd pump his carcass into an engine and let him power the house, because he'd mean _that_ little to her if she knew.

The poor boy swore he could feel the temperature drop when Maddie drooped, fiddling halfheartedly with the thermos.

"…Danny, you wouldn't be my little boy anymore. You have to understand that," she said. "You wouldn't be _you_ anymore—you'd just be a monster in my son's clothing."

Monster. Danny let that word throb in his mind as his mother paused. Monster. A monster in his own clothing.

That was…that was what he was now. A monster in his own clothing.

"Nothing about you would be the same. You wouldn't care about me, or your father, or Jazz, or your friends—you'd just be hollow, and sure, _'conscious'_ —but that's no way to exist, Danny. And…and it's my duty to study and eliminate ghosts."

She pulled him into another hug.

"That's never going to happen, though, okay, sweetie?" she tried. "Even if—if something does ever _happen_ to you, the chances of you being a ghost are so low. You wouldn't become one of them. I promise that's never going to happen to a sweet, caring boy like you."

Danny didn't tense this time, instead falling limp against his mother. The burns didn't seem so bad now, compared to what she'd just said.

The moment ended as Maddie let go and stood back up, exchanging a brief word with Masters before going back downstairs. Having nothing else to look at, Danny looked at Masters.

The man's body had gone very, very still, not confident at all, and a restless, but glassy look crowded in his eyes as they followed Maddie out the door.

They locked eyes again before Masters gestured floppily at the food in Danny's lap.

"That won't get any warmer if you let it sit, Daniel."

Danny seized his food and brought it to his mouth, eating but not tasting. He kept his head down and Masters seemed okay with that, returning to his own meal.

Danny was doomed. That much was obvious.

* * *

Vlad's a Hitchcock/50s horror and suspense junkie on the side, for the sake of perfecting his image as Plasmius, and no one can tell me otherwise. Also, I've read the Exorcist. It's an incredibly well-written book, but it IS considerably higher on the disgust factor than the movie (and Vlad's personal taste).

Maddie and Jazz are both pretty complex characters that only have their first impression made known here. And as far as Danny goes, I feel like a common mistake in fanfic is making him too poetic? That being said, I took pains to make him as blatant as can possibly be.

I'm betting that conversation with Maddie will have an interesting effect on Vlad's infatuation with her. Then again, that infatuation is backed by twenty-plus years of petty obstinance, so we just don't know. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Sam and Tucker get a more proper spotlight in chapter 4.


End file.
